Hardworking waitresses say tips skimmed

Chris Churchill, The Advocate

Published 10:49 pm, Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Billie Tully looks through contracts from her former employer Carmela's Banquet House as she talks to The Advocate at her house on Monday Feb. 25, 2013 in Troy, N.Y. A group of Carmela's Banquet House former employees are trying to recovered withheld wages through a state labor department complaint. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Billie Tully looks through contracts from her former employer...

Billie Tully, left, talks to The Advocate about her former employer Carmela's Banquet House at her house on Monday Feb. 25, 2013 in Troy, N.Y. Several Carmela's Banquet House former employees, including Pat Masterson, right, and Nicole Manupella, on speaker phone, are trying to recovered withheld wages through a state labor department complaint. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Billie Tully, left, talks to The Advocate about her former employer...

Billie Tully, left, talks to The Advocate about her former employer Carmela's Banquet House at her house on Monday Feb. 25, 2013 in Troy, N.Y. Several Carmela's Banquet House former employees, including Pat Masterson, right, and Nicole Manupella, on speaker phone, are trying to recovered withheld wages through a state labor department complaint. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Billie Tully, left, talks to The Advocate about her former employer...

RENSSELAER — The women enjoyed their jobs. But, really, they worked at Carmela's Banquet House for one reason: the money.

So when Billie Tully, Nicole Manupella and Patricia Masterson began to suspect that the owners of the hall in Rensselaer were withholding a portion of their tips, they were of course angered and alarmed. The women confronted management, but say their complaints were ignored.

Then, last spring, the three took their concerns to the state Department of Labor, which launched an investigation. Within months, Carmela's closed for good.

Today, as the labor department continues to probe their complaint, Tully, Manupella and Masterson say they're sick of waiting. They want what they're allegedly owed. They want to move on.

"This isn't out of spite, and we're not trying to do anything to (the owners)," Tully told me, as we sat in her home in Troy. "But we worked really hard for that money."

Carmela's Banquet House was located at 301 Washington Ave. It was owned and operated by Walter Foust, who is 64 and lives in North Greenbush, according to voter registration records, and Kenneth DeGrocco, 56, who has homes in Guilderland and Vero Beach, Fla.

Foust, reached by telephone, declined to comment for this story. I tried local and long-distance numbers for DeGrocco, but couldn't track him down.

For Manupella, the head waitress, Carmela's was a full-time job. Tully and Masterson worked full-time jobs elsewhere, but moonlighted at Carmela's for frequent evening or weekend shifts. The work was tough — the kind of scurrying that makes your feet and legs hurt. Shifts ended late.

"I always considered it paid exercise," said Masterson, who lives in Cohoes. "It was a lot of hard, physical work, and I would always be hurting the next day."

Still, the women enjoyed their time at work. The staff at Carmela's was close-knit, almost like family. And they liked the give-and-take with customers, and the satisfaction that comes with helping make someone's important life event — a wedding, say, or a bat mitzvah — the best it could be.

The pay, however, was irregular. Waitresses at Carmela's received only $5 or $6 an hour. Five dollars an hour is the minimum wage for food servers in New York, but the state expects the salary to be boosted by gratuities.

Tips are often unpredictable, of course. But many customers at Carmela's signed contracts that added a 20 percent gratuity to the bill. That means similar events should have resulted in similar tip totals.

Yet Tully, Manupella and Masterson claim that wasn't the case. And they say simple math (dividing the tip by the number of employees) confirmed their suspicions.

"Whatever they felt fit to give us is what they gave us," added Manupella of Waterford. "Which isn't how it works."

That's true — a tip goes to the workers and only the workers. New York labor law is quite clear about that: "A charge purported to be a gratuity," it says, "must be distributed in full as gratuities to the service employees or food-service workers who provided the service."

I hate to be cynical, but I suspect they're are a lot of service workers out there who aren't getting the full value of their tips. And that not only deprives families of much-needed money, but misleads patrons who think they're providing a reward for good service.

So how much will Masterson, Manupella and Tully receive if the labor department confirms their claims? Well, that's impossible to say.

The women, who each worked at Carmela's for years, believe they're each owed at least several thousand dollars. If money allegedly owed to other employees is included, the total could even become more than $80,000.

Masterson, Manupella and Tully say employees at the labor department have told them it ruled in their favor and is pursuing the recovery of money, although the women have not received official confirmation. But they're otherwise frustrated by the lack of information from the department.

"They won't tell us what's going on, or what the next step is," Manupella said.

Leo Rosales, a spokesman for the department, declined to comment on the case, citing the ongoing investigation. But he said the department aggressively pursues legitimate claims from New Yorkers who have been shortchanged by their employers.

"Our role is to be the advocate for the workers," Rosales said. "We're really good at this stuff. If there's a case to be made, we'll go after it."

But, for now, Masterson, Manupella and Tully are left waiting. They hope to get what they're allegedly owed. They hate what this has come to, and note that they remained loyal to Carmela's and its patrons — staying on the job long after they believed they were being stiffed.